The plot did not curtail and resolve at the end of each episode, or even at the end of each season. This past Sunday, Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad stormed full steam ahead, toward its inevitable, capsized termination. The program’s narrative arc mirrors the inexorable dissolution of its protagonist, the meth-slinging schoolteacher-turned-homicidal-trainwreck, Walter White (Bryan Cranston). The series was neither episodic nor cinematic (narratively-speaking), but it was novelistic. A perfectly paced slow-burner built on character development, Breaking Bad never made reposeful or expository detours but charged from episode one to episode 62 with a vengeance.
Much like television history’s other titans like The Sopranos, The Wire, and Mad Men, the series began with a regret panged, middle-aged, underachieving man helplessly searching for a way to provide for his family. But what started out as naiveté and an in-over-your-head psychological exasperation soon gave way to meticulously crafted deceit and manipulations, steadily structuring a metamorphosis from chemistry class pushover to savoir-faire drug lord.
Truly, the Walter White story begins and ends with Gray Matter, the pharmaceutical start-up White launches during his college years with a former research assistant and a then-girlfriend. When he sees no progress being made, White chooses to buy out of Gray Matter for a measly $5,000. As it happens, Gray Matter turns into a billion dollar corporation, its two co-founders eventually marry, and high school chemistry teacher Walter White can only look on: bitter and penniless. Then there’s the cancer. Diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer at the age of 41, White doesn’t have many options. In order to provide future financial support for his family, he turns to his chemical engineering roots and cracks up a plan to manufacture the most pure and chemically sound crystal meth in the country. He teams up with drug-addicted surburbanite Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), a former high school chemistry student, for his ample street-level connections.
Walter White is not the overt scumbag his job description suggests — or is he? He is too intelligent to be caught, captured, or found out. The tragedy of Breaking Bad is that the characters that Walter White originally sought to protect — his loved ones, his lab-partner, his extended family — are the ones who suffer, while he remains unaffected by drug trafficking, overdoses, kidnapping, wire-tapping, money laundering, and violent murders. Most importantly, Walter is not undone; he makes vain attempts to salvage whatever he can, yet he’s unable to prevent the yarn from continuing to unravel.
The series’ unforgettable third-to-last episode “Ozymandias,” which takes its name from a Percy Shelley poem, was the culmination of this familial falling-apart. After having the news broken to him that his father is a drug dealer, Walter White’s son, aptly named Walter Jr., is forced to call the police when a fight breaks out between his parents. This prompts Walter to flee his own home.
In season three, fan-favourite Jesse Pinkman learns the term “Kafka-esque” at a drug rehabilitation program meeting. Franz Kafka, a Czechoslovakian-born writer, wrote bizarre novels in which innocent characters were persecuted or arrested for actions they had not committed, or for incidents beyond their control for which they were unaware.
Jesse is the most contrite character on the show. A man tortured by his conscious, he is hyper-aware of the consequences of his actions. As a result, he produces the program’s most heart-rending and teary-eyed performances. Most importantly, Jesse provides an antithesis to the Kafka-esque narrative. He commits myriad crimes and shows self-destructive tendencies yet, to his disbelief, no justice arrives — leading him to produce the line, “If you just do stuff and nothing happens, what’s the point? What’s it all mean?”
The quote is as painstakingly simple as much as it is philosophical. In a serpentine kind of way, what the writers of Breaking Bad are getting at here is that our actions, good or bad, no matter their intentions, may not always have the proper consequences.
